


There is beauty in the way of things

by kimabutch (CWoodP)



Series: Sasha's Epilogue [3]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, References to childhood trauma & child death, Religious Content, Roman Rogues Sidequest, selective mutism, tag wranglers pls save me with Riz's tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:26:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24565336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CWoodP/pseuds/kimabutch
Summary: "Grizzop turned out all calm and quiet. He loves plants and growing living things. Cleric of Opis. I hope other Grizzop would be ok with that."Or, how Riz found the Cult of Opis.
Relationships: Sasha Racket & Riz
Series: Sasha's Epilogue [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676896
Comments: 20
Kudos: 63





	There is beauty in the way of things

**Author's Note:**

> I know we've only had Riz for one episode but listen... I love him. Also I did an embarrassing amount of research about plants and Roman gardens for this fic but I still probably got some stuff wrong, so sorry in advance to people who know stuff about gardens. 
> 
> Title is from There Beneath by the Oh Hellos. Thanks to Heather for reading it first <3

The good thing about the garden, Riz thinks, is that it always needs work. Wilde says that’s what makes it stupid, that you can work and work and it won’t ever be done and all you’ll get is dirty knees, but that’s what Riz likes about it. Not the dirty knees, though he doesn’t mind that either, but you can always find something to do in the garden. 

And that’s good when Riz needs an excuse to leave his siblings to their bickering as they practice their tumbles. Amidus’s loud, lecturing voice and Bertus’s shouted rebukes are muffled as Riz enters the empty garden courtyard. It’s early morning, but streams of summer sun are already pouring down from between the clouds and playing among the leaves of the plants, so bright and powerful that Riz can almost imagine the garden growing as he stands there looking at it. 

The garden’s full of herbs and vegetables, packed in as many rows as can fit in the wide space. Before the boss came here, Cicero says, it used to be filled with flowers, arranged in boxes with space to walk between — but, well, the boss has always been a little more practical and efficient. No point in growing things you can’t eat, she says, no point in having wasted space. Riz thinks he agrees with her, even if she doesn’t know much about growing things. This place doesn’t need boxes or walkways to make it special. 

“Bet you’re loving the sun,” Riz murmurs to the beanstalks as he approaches them, checks they’re holding fast to their trellises, places his hand gently into the soil to make sure it’s not too wet. He kneels down to methodically pull the weeds around the plants. That’s another good thing about the garden, he thinks — it doesn’t care how tall you are. Riz _likes_ sneaking, tumbling and climbing, of course, but he’s never going to be good at them like when he was small. But in the garden, things are supposed to grow, and he’s no worse at weeding than when he came here. 

He’d been five or six then, or at least that’s what Cicero guessed when they brought him in. Riz doesn’t remember the years after the fall too well. There’d been his older siblings, four of them at first, who’d kept him safe and teased him and — he doesn’t know what happened to them. Doesn’t know why he was alone when the boss found him in an abandoned house, doesn’t even really recall being found. 

Sometimes that worries him, especially when he’s trying to remember how his brother smiled or what his sister’s voice sounded like. Other times, he thinks maybe it’s better he doesn’t know. Some of his new brothers and sisters remember things that keep them up at night. Maybe it’s good that he’s replaced memories from before with knowledge about what manure to feed his leeks or how much shade the lettuce he’s now weeding needs. “Should probably harvest you soon,” he says quietly as he picks a small leaf off of a lettuce head and chews it thoughtfully. 

The boss says that when he arrived, he wouldn’t talk to no one, couldn’t do nothing for weeks til they brought him out in the garden. It was the plants that brought him alive, she says. His first memories that aren’t wrapped in fog and uncertainty are of the garden, and the first time he spoke in the villa was to a plant, telling a wilting basil that he’d make it better. Aulus, one of the adults who lived in the villa and who’d taught Riz all he knew about the plants, had told the boss about him speaking. To Riz’s relief, she hadn’t made him give her a demonstration, only smiled wider than he’d almost ever seen. 

It was still a while before he talked to anyone but the plants. By that time, the nickname the boss had given him had stuck, and when she’d asked him if he’d like to be called anything else, he’d shaken his head no. So he’d stayed Riz and he’d learned backflips along with gardening and eventually, after many months, he’d started talking to his new siblings. He knows he’s still not too good with words, but out of everything, that doesn’t worry him much — the boss isn’t either, and she always knows what to do. 

Riz moves from weeding the cabbages to the herbs, the bright scents of mint, thyme, basil, fennel and savory intermingling in the air as he draws nearer. He loves them all, loves their different shapes and flowers and how their smells spring to life when he rubs their leaves. He’s read everything Cicero could find for him about how they can heal, told the boss that maybe he could learn enough to fix her leg. She’d smiled at that, fingers on the wooden heart pendant around her neck, and said maybe, yeah, and Riz had doubled down on his reading. He knows there are clerics who do healing magic, though not many, but it feels right to him that the things that grow in the ground could grow back a body that’s been hurt. 

It’s when Riz is weeding around the fennel, reciting under his breath its healing properties by rote, that he notices that the hyssop’s been disturbed. Probably Azus hiding here again, he thinks as he inspects it — judging from the small footprints in the soil around and, gods damn it, _in_ the plant. “You’re gonna be okay,” Riz murmurs as he squats and gently touches the shrub’s trampled, dirt-soaked branches, trying to figure out how many have been broken off. “I’ll just —”

Before Riz can finish the thought, there is a rustling and a sudden explosion of movement in his hands as the hyssop bush — as it — it’s _growing_. Broken and bruised branches are knitting themselves back together, pulling themselves out of the disturbed soil, and growing, growing taller and quicker than it ever has before, reaching into the bright sunny sky. Purple flowers bloom instantly on the new branches in breathtaking, vibrant multitudes, overwhelming Riz’s senses with their sweet, minty smell as he falls back onto the ground in shock. 

The hyssop continues to climb, faster and faster, impossibly high without any kind of support, yet still leaving the plants beside it undisturbed, until Riz is sure that it’s taller than him standing. The plant stays there for a moment, basking in the morning sunlight, towering over Riz and his garden in miraculous purple majesty. And then, just as quickly, it descends, shrinking back until it’s simply large, not impossibly so, and its flowers, though still repaired, are no longer as vividly bright as the stars. As the rustling quiets and the hyssop falls motionless, Riz sits still on the ground, staring, trying to remember to breathe. 

“Might want to see a temple about that one,” the boss’s voice says from behind him. Riz doesn’t need to turn his head to know that she’s leaning against a wall watching him, and probably has been for a while — even with her limp, she’s still the sneakiest of all of them. She walks slowly to the hyssop, apparently unbothered by what just happened, and gently takes a branch in her rough hands, as if testing that it’s real. “Opis, I reckon,” she says after a few moments of consideration. “Can’t say I know much about Her, but like, can’t be that bad.” 

Riz opens and shuts his mouth a few times before he can get out the words. “That was a _god_?” 

“Looks like it,” the boss says, leaning in and smelling the plant like its scent is somehow a proof of miraculousness. “I haven’t like, I haven’t seen anything like it exactly but it seems like the kinda thing they’d do.” 

“Oh.” Riz says, going quiet again as he tries to work out the implications of that. “So they — She — wants me to like… what does She want?”

“I dunno,” she says. “Mostly they want followers, I think. People doing good things for them. The temple would know, but… it’s not like, you don’t have to go if you don’t want. You don’t have to work for anyone you don’t want.” 

She’s still staring into the plant, not making eye contact, but her words are sharp, and Riz knows she means them. He’s heard this lesson before, about choosing your own boss, about not working for or with people who don’t treat you right. About being able to leave the villa if they want, for any reason. He knows there are other jobs out there and other bosses than the boss. He’s just never thought about it for himself. 

“Would you be okay with me going there, boss?” Riz asks. “Like, if I wanted to.”

“What have I said bout you being able to choose that for yourself?” the boss says. “I don’t get to tell you that.” 

“I know, boss,” Riz says, eager not to get another lecture. “But you’ve always said the gods don’t do too much for us.” 

The boss gives a half-smile at his remembered lesson. “Yeah, I’ve said that. But not much isn’t the same as nothing. The gods have done some good things for me before. And like, maybe they did them cause they liked my friends or something, but I’ve always said, doing good things cause of your friends, that’s halfway to doing good things just to do them.”

“Right, boss,” Riz says. He goes quiet again, looking down at his feet, covered in dirt. He tries to imagine what it might be like to leave here. To meet other people who like to make things grow, who want to help people and heal them. Do any of them talk to plants, too? Do they like to just sit and watch how the garden changes, little by little, every day? 

There’s a faint thump beside Riz as the boss lowers herself to the ground beside him; he hadn’t even noticed her move. She sits there in silence with him for a few minutes, her face its usual unreadable mask of thought. Then finally, deliberately, she turns to him. 

“Look, Riz,” she says. “You know I go to the temple of Artemis every year for Grizzop — the other one. And like, I don’t know too much about Her, never been good at that god stuff, but Grizzop was good to me and… sometimes you want to remember things, right? You want to remember and say thank you. And if this” — she gestures vaguely at the garden surrounding them — “if it makes you remember, if it makes you want to say thanks, and if you want to keep saying thanks… then maybe you should.” 

Riz can’t think of how to respond to that, so he doesn’t, instead staring into the purple of the hyssop like it might have an answer. Eventually, the boss sighs, making to get up. “I should go check on the practice,” she says. “But if you need me to listen… you know I can do that.” 

“Yeah, boss,” Riz says, smiling slightly as she walks off.

He stays there for a while longer, wishing that somehow the gods could tell him what _he_ wants to do, not just what they want. Eventually, when the mid-morning sun starts beating down on the back of his neck, Riz gets up, dusting off his tunic. Then, slowly and methodically, he finishes his rounds, weeding the last of the herbs, watering those that have gotten too dry. He picks up his basket of pulled weeds to take outside and starts to leave. At the threshold of the atrium, he turns, looking out over the garden towards the hyssop. 

“Thanks,” he whispers, and heads back inside. 


End file.
